Yesterday is But a Dream
by SunnyZim
Summary: Emily Uley could remember a time when life was easy. When she had dreams, ambitions, a bright future. However, we don't always choose our destiny. Sometimes, our destiny chooses us. Recommended in The Lazy Yet Discerning Ficster blog.


**A/N: This is a departure from my usual Jacob/Bella one-shots. I read a discussion on the LJ community Sort of Awesome about Emily and Leah, and one of the comments was that Emily is quite a two-dimensional character in the books - that all there is to her is her motherliness and her love for baking muffins. And that got me thinking.....and the more I thought about it, the more it bugged me until I just had to write this:) So I hope you enjoy this and my especial hope is that it fleshes out Emily's character a bit more. Leave a review at the end to let me know if you think I succeeded;)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight.  
**

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**Yesterday is But a Dream**

_For Yesterday is but a Dream,_

_And Tomorrow is only a Vision._

_~ Kalidasa ~  
_

Emily Uley could remember a time when life was easy. When she had dreams, ambitions, a bright future. She wanted to travel, to study, to become a nurse. And yes, eventually get married, but not yet. Not till she had had time to _explore and grow and adventure. _There was no rush after all; she was young, beautiful, talented. She had time. She could remember a time when _undying love _and _life-long commitment _were just concepts, ideas that she had thought about, sure, but only with the future, the far-off in mind. She could remember when _betrayal _and _agony _and _torturous guilt _were things that happened to other people. When her best friend, Leah, still looked at her with affection and camaraderie. All these things, Emily could remember.

And wished she could forget. Because, contrary to popular belief, pain on its own is not painful if you have never known anything else. Then, it is just a fact of life; you know no different and so you deal with it. No, as Emily had learnt from her own experience, pain hurts the most when it intrudes upon a perfect life, an unwelcome stranger. When it waltzes in the back door, unexpected, uninvited, and promptly takes over the entire house. Pain hurts the most when you have something to _compare _it to. And the more perfect your life was before it was ruined, shattered, the harder you fell.

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Emily could recall with perfect clarity the day that this unwelcome stranger knocked on her back door. Except that it wasn't her back door, but rather her cousin's front door. And the stranger wasn't a stranger, but was her cousin's boyfriend, Sam Uley. Emily had opened the door, as Leah was out, and that was the beginning of the end: the end of her perfect world. Because Sam, whose hand was still raised as though to knock again, met her gaze and couldn't look away. His dark eyes burned into hers, piercing through her outward layers to her very soul, and she felt _exposed, naked _and _uncomfortable. _She didn't like being looked at so intimately by a strange man, let alone her cousin's boyfriend, and so she did something that under normal circumstances, she would never dream of doing. She shut the door in his face. And locked it. And fled quickly up the stairs to the guest room where she was staying and locked that door too. And then she collapsed in a crumpled heap on her bed and sobbed.

A strange reaction, it is true, and if you asked her she would not be able to tell you why she reacted that way, except that she suddenly felt horribly unmoored, as if her whole life had been tilted on its axis and the hinges had broken and now it was tumbling down around her ears with a resounding _crash. _When Leah found her like this later, Emily could not say anything except _Leah, I'm so scared. Why me? _and Leah could not answer her because she did not know what she was talking about. She could do nothing but hold her cousin's trembling body in her arms, gazing over her dark head into the distance, wondering what could possibly have caused this outburst and why Sam was avoiding her.

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Emily avoided Sam over the next month. Whenever she saw him in the distance, she would walk swiftly in the opposite direction until he was out of sight. And then she would _run. _But you cannot run from destiny forever and one day he succeeded in cornering her by the woods outside Leah's house. He told her he loved her, he couldn't live without her, they were _meant to be together. _Emily told him to go to hell. However, she didn't mean for him to take her with him.

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_Pain. _No, scratch that. _Agony. Searing agony. _Her face felt as though it was slowly being eaten from within by a raging fire – it _burned, ached, seared at her soul. _She wanted nothing more than to reach up her hand and rip it off, tear off the pain, the dying flesh, _take it away. _But as she moved her hand to perform this action, she felt the agony spread spitefully downwards to inflict that too. She couldn't move, couldn't blink, couldn't _die. _Oh, how she wanted to die in that moment and her body wouldn't_ let _her_. _It forced her heart to carry on beating, her lungs to carry on expanding, her brain to carry on mercilessly functioning. She tried to hold her breath, but succeeded in doing nothing more than passing out temporarily. Brief, merciful unconsciousness. But all too soon, she was awake again and the pain was back, beating, throbbing, ripping, tearing at her insides.

A soft, guttural noise came from somewhere to the right and she turned her head towards it slightly, trying to discern what it was without being able to see past the bandages on her face. Sobbing. Breathy, wet, heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching sobs. A man, sobbing near her bed. She reached out her hand, fingers groping desperately, blindly and someone grasped it. The hand in hers was warm, rough, big.

"Wh-Who is that?"she asked, voice cracking with the effort, although deep inside she already knew who it was. Who else?

"Sam," came the soft reply, confirming what she already knew.

And there, that moment, that was when she knew beyond a doubt that there truly was no going back for her. What do you do when someone tells you that they can't live without you? That they will literally die if you reject them? What do you do when they once loved your best friend? And above all, what do you do, if for some strange, inexplicable, terrifying reason, you love them back? At first, you tell them to go to hell. And when that doesn't work? Well then, you come to a crossroads. But hearing the soft miserable sobs near her bed and feeling the wetness of tears splashing on the union of their hands, she knew that there never really was a choice. Not for her. And not for him. And so she squeezed his hand gently, a silent promise that somehow, they would get through this. Together. And make the most of the curveball that life had thrown them both.

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Emily Uley smiled and laughed and baked endless batches of muffins. She mothered and loved and cared for the members of her husband's pack. She was happy with her life. She loved her husband and she loved the pack. She loved baking and nurturing. But Emily Uley remembered a time when she wanted more. When more was possible. Before Sam or Fate marked her, set her apart for something different.

She remembered a time when life was easy and dreams were more than just dreams.

**A/N: So, what did you think?? Please review and tell me your thoughts! I promise I don't bite;)**


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